Sunday, November 13, 2011

After I made my mom two bird pot holders back in May, I told her I'd make her another square one since she liked that one better so she'd have a set. I meant to have it ready when I saw her in July...then in September...but I just didn't sew much this summer.

I decided to use a different, brighter color scheme for this one, so hopefully she doesn't mind that they are not a matching pair.

I really love this brown fabric. It doesn't match the birds at all, but the binding ties them together nicely. For some reason the binding looks so much brighter on the back, even though I took the pictures in the exact same spot right after each other.

In my effort to use up craft supplies that have just been sitting around, I busted out my rusty crochet skills and also made this dish cloth since I thought I recalled that she liked ones like this. The colors are somewhat complimentary to the birds.

Sunday, November 6, 2011

I've received a couple requests for the pattern I used to create the lightning bolt blocks in my Pink Stars quilt. Since I paper pieced the block, the pattern got destroyed in the process, but I was able to recreate it:

How I designed it:
I started by drawing a rectangle roughly the size I wanted the block to be and drawing my lightning bolt within. Then I sketched it out to fill the rectangle in a way that I could divide up for sewing.

How to sew it:
The block is comprised of three sections (top, middle, bottom), and each section has 3 pieces (2 dark, one light). Cut the pattern apart on the two diagonal lines, separating the top, middle, and bottom sections. Using the paper as your base, sew each section, making sure to leave a 1/4 inch seam allowance on the top and bottom of each section. Then sew the sections together and remove the paper.

If you've never paper pieced, SewHooked has a lot of paper piecing resources. I use magazine pages as my base because they tear away so easily. For larger blocks, I use parchment paper. Alternately, you can cut all the pieces apart and use them to cut out the appropriate shapes.

Saturday, November 5, 2011

I love reusable shopping bags. On my trip to North Carolina and DC this summer, I added 5 new ones to my collection, each particularly special because I couldn't get them at home, but the red Piggly Wiggly quickly became my favorite. I didn't shop at Piggly Wiggly when I lived in NC because there wasn't one by my house. (I looked for a bag at Food Lion but they didn't have them. I did get a Tar Heel one from Harris Teeter.) We made a special stop at Piggly Wiggly just because I thought they might have amusing bags. They did. I was not a fan of the "Piggly" side, but I loved the "Wiggly" side.

And then it got ripped by a cashier at Target:

Horrors! I've never had a bag rip before, and I was mad at myself because I had been particularly careful to only use this one for non-grocery shopping trips so it would stay in better shape, and I had forgotten when I handed over my bags on this trip. I was horrified and traumatized. Once I calmed down, it occurred to me to recycle the "Wiggly" part since I'm not that fond of the "Piggly" side anyway. Fortunately I was able to stop by Michael's while traveling for work, and they again had the orange and black reusable Halloween bags I used to make my Clemson bag last year. It was a bit tricky to sew on a bag that was already assembled, but now I have a lovely "Wiggly" bag again.